Digital Trends News

It turns out that injecting old people with blood from healthy youngsters might not be the answer to health rejuvenation after all. That’s according to a statement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which suggests that these claims are not only most likely junk science, but that they also pose some major potential health risks.

The idea of blood being some kind of youth restorative has been enshrined in folklore for years. However, as this Digital Trends article makes clear, it has gained momentum in recent years, through controversial efforts like the plasma treatment startup Ambrosia. Plenty of people in the scientific community have dismissed this kind of thing as being pseudoscientific snake oil — but clearly, there is enough interest in it that the FDA felt the need to come forward and offer its own warning.

“The FDA has recently become aware of reports of establishments in several states that are offering infusions of plasma from young donors to purportedly treat the effects of a variety of conditions,” the press release notes. “The conditions range from normal aging and memory loss to serious diseases like dementia, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease or post-traumatic stress disorder. We have significant public health concerns about the promotion and use of plasma for these purposes. There is no proven clinical benefit of infusion of plasma from young donors to cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent these conditions, and there are risks associated with the use of any plasma product.”

The FDA points out that treatments using plasma from young donors have not gone through the kind of rigorous testing that the FDA requires. It has also not been officially recognized as helping treat aging, memory loss, or various neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s. It might additionally stop patients from seeking out safe and effective treatments in favor of something unproven and risky.

“Simply put, we’re concerned that some patients are being preyed upon by unscrupulous actors touting treatments of plasma from young donors as cures and remedies,” the FDA statement continues. “Such treatments have no proven clinical benefits for the uses for which these clinics are advertising them and are potentially harmful. There are reports of bad actors charging thousands of dollars for infusions that are unproven and not guided by evidence from adequate and well-controlled trials.”

Will this be the final word on the matter? Almost certainly not. But it’s already having some effects. Responding to the announcement, Ambrosia has officially ceased patient treatments. Until the science is sorted, that can only be a good thing.

Citymapper is becoming a fintech startup, sort of. The company announced a prepaid card called Citymapper Pass for users based in London. This new product is both a subscription service to aggregate all your transportation subscriptions and a plastic card to pay for your rides.

According to Wired, Citymapper will start with two weekly subscription packages. For £30 per month, you’ll get full access to zone 1 and 2 on TfL’s network. For an additional £10 per week, you’ll also get unlimited Santander bike rides and two rides using Citymapper’s car-sharing service.

This isn’t exactly revolutionary for London commuters, but it’s a start. Eventually, the startup wants to add more transport methods, from dockless bikes to e-scooters and other private networks. But this is going to be a bit more complicated as the startup needs to sign a deal with each company.

You could imagine creating a custom package with your favorite transportation methods and pay once for all services. More interestingly, the plastic card is a good old prepaid card. You can top up your balance just like you’d top up your Revolut account and use that card if you’re traveling to a different zone.

The card should be compatible with Apple Pay and Google Pay. If you travel a lot, Citymapper lets you pause your subscription whenever you want — there’s no long-term commitment.

As urban mobility becomes more fragmented, Citymapper wants to act as an aggregator. Many people already rely on the app to calculate itineraries. But the startup now wants to go beyond mapping. It could be a way to monetize the service as well. You’ll be able to subscribe to Citymapper Pass in March or April.

A lockbox doesn’t do a whole lot to deter thieves if they can just grab the entire thing off your shelf, but this compact Master Lock 5900D includes a built-in security cable so you can secure it to something solid. So you could, say, attach it to some pipes and use it as a tiny at-home safe. or secure it to a heavy…

The first time climate change hit home for me, I was at the top of a ski run. I don’t recall the exact date or even the exact mountain I was on (hell, maybe it was a dream), but I remember looking down the slope of untracked powder and wondering how long it would be there. It stuck with me, and my life swerved from…

TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2019 returns to the Moscone North Convention Center for three action-packed days devoted to early-stage startups. On October 2-4, more than 10,000 tech founders, investors, developers, engineers and startup fans from around the world will converge and create a veritable breeding ground of opportunity. And here’s the best part — you can save $500 on the price right now.

It’s easy! All you need to do is sign up today for our mailing list, and when registration opens next month, you’ll receive a discount code for $500 off the price of your Disrupt SF passes. That’s an awesome ROI right there.

All kinds of events and speakers will be announced in the coming weeks and months, but for now, here’s a quick look at what you can expect. Imagine the great feeling you’ll have exploring all that Disrupt SF has to offer knowing that you saved a bundle.

You’ll find hundreds of outstanding pre-Series A companies in Startup Alley, Disrupt’s exhibition floor that sits at the crossroads of innovation, networking and opportunity. That’s where you’ll find the TC Top Picks — a juried cadre of exceptional startups exhibiting for free, hand-picked by TechCrunch editors. Keep an eye out for more information about the different ways you can exhibit in Startup Alley — including applying to be a TC Top Pick.

Take in the spectacle that is Startup Battlefield and watch as some of the best startups compete head-to-head for bragging rights, the Disrupt Cup, loads of media and investor attention and, oh yeah, a $100,000 equity-free cash prize. If you think your startup can withstand the heat, keep checking our site to see when the Startup Battlefield application portal opens.

Take in an impressive array of speakers — leading founders, technologists, investors and tech icons. Past speakers have included the likes of Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz; Marc Benioff, founder and co-CEO at Salesforce; and Tracy Chou, infrastructure engineer at Pinterest — to name just a few.

If you want to flex your coding muscles, you’ll be glad to hear that our on-site Hackathon returns to run in tangent with Disrupt SF. Join a team from among the hundreds of caffeine-fueled developers, engineers, students, marketers and makers and spend an exhilarating, exhausting two days coding, competing and hacking your way to a new product. As always, bragging rights are on the line, along with industry exposure, cash, prizes, contests and plenty of sweet, sweet swag.

Disrupt SF 2019 takes place October 2-4 at the Moscone North, and this is just a taste to wet your Disrupt whistle — there’s lots more to come. In the meantime, sign up for our mailing list and save yourself $500 off the price of admission.

When Google announced earlier this month that its Nest Secure smart home hub would double-up as a Google Assistant, the news sparked anger, since Google hadn’t told anyone that the security hub had a microphone inside to begin with.

Now Google is trying to explain itself, claiming there’s absolutely, positively nothing to worry about: “The on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret and should have been listed in the tech spec. That was an error on our part.”

With SoundCloud Premier distribution, artists can upload their tracks to all major music services — including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, Tencent, YouTube Music and even Instagram — directly from SoundCloud.

Entrepreneur First, the London-headquartered “talent investor” that recruits and backs individuals pre-team and pre-idea to enable them to found startups, has raised a new fund of its own to continue scaling globally.

A one-week-later reminder: Extra Crunch is a toolkit to help you build a better startup, offering exclusive access to analysis of successful startups, resources on company building, lists of verified experts in key services, enhanced reader tools, conference calls and more.

Game of Thrones comes back for its eighth and final season on April 14. The final six episodes will (hopefully) wrap up several years of stories, character journeys, and clever Tyrion Lannister one-liners. But sometimes it’s hard to remember exactly what happened on this series that started way back in 2011. So, we’ve…